


Etched in my Soul

by SunlitDarkness



Category: The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Platonic Soulmates, Pre-Book 1: City of Bones, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, platonic soulmates share pain, romantic soulmates get the written words thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 09:38:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13292115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunlitDarkness/pseuds/SunlitDarkness
Summary: Success is placing the best possible version of yourself in the best possible place.Love is support for their best self whether or not that happens.Ragnor Fell featuring the Warlock Squad soulmate au with both romantic and platonic soulmates.





	Etched in my Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Romantic soul mates have identifying marks and words that they write on themselves show up on their soulmate.  
> Platonic soulmates share each other's pain and scars.
> 
> This is an au based off of squirenonny's Love and Other Questions soulmate au. Because I love that and it makes my heart sing.

Ragnor Fell is on vacation.  


Of course, he’s only counting it a vacation because Magnus has yet to cause a scene that required Ragnor to haul ass and work to fix everything. Just leaving Idris doesn’t count as vacation.  


But he’s sitting in the fancy but hideously colored wingback chair that Raphael had regifted to him in the early 80’s. Ragnor still has a sneaking suspicion that Raphael had only gotten rid of it because a couple newer vampires had mocked the shitty colors of the seventies. And that is why Ragnor has the baby shit green faux velveteen chair in his living room. It’s totally not so that he can see Magnus cringe and mime gagging every time he visits Ragnor. No. Definitely not. He’s sitting in his stupid chair and redoing a handful of demonic translations in a 5th century book. There’s the Berlin recording of _The Magic Flute_ on (he can’t remember which year’s recording it is). It’s nice. Peaceful even. The only thing that might make it better would be a dog to share his seat and his space.  


Which is obviously why the universe decides to throw platonic soulmate number one into the mix.  


“Ragnor!” There’s a shout at the door and a familiarity against the wards around his apartment. “RAGnoooooor!” Magnus knocks aggressively against his door, hard enough that it dusts Ragnor’s right knuckles gold. “RA G N O R!”  


He doesn’t look up from his book.  


The knocking pauses and is followed by a smack and thump. Ragnor’s nerves spark in time with Magnus’s moderate pain at the base of his palm and a spot just above his eyebrows. He calmly turns the page and readjusts the blanket over his feet. He grabs the legal pad on the end table and makes note of a discrepancy between Caterina’s interpretation and the text.  


_Bangananbangbangbangbanbang._ “Ragnor it’s actually an important thing!!!” Magnus pauses a beat. “It’s a good thing, I swear!” There’s a strained note towards the end of his sentence. Ragnor quirks an eyebrow at the door, pursing his lips in amusement despite knowing Magnus can’t see it.  


“I don’t care about the Spring Collection from Louie Pirie!” he calls through the door, a laugh and smile tangling his words. “I don’t care about how half the models are from the Unseelie court either! Let me have my vacation today and I’ll watch the recap with commentary with you tomorrow!” Ragnor tries to maintain his disapproving and unfun usual tone, but he’s grinning even as he flicks a silencing spell across the room. There’s a muffled rattle as Magnus keeps up the sharp raps on his door. Ragnor winces and brings his knuckles to his mouth at the phantom ache. He squints back at the book in his hand, frowning when the words jumble together. He can’t tell if it’s just him or if the book’s deciding to mess with him.  


He frowns and unfolds himself from the chair, fingers marking his place. He stretches and there’s an alarming number of clicks his body gives when he stretches. His front door flexes silently in its frame while Ragnor moves over to his work table. It’ll be easier in the long run to detect magics imbued in the book. He hums at himself in response to the passing chastisement for not doing this first. His long fingers tip the bottles and jar this way and that.  


With a toss and a triumphant grin, Ragnor plucks the jar up from among its friends. Curling his hands up towards his chest to protect the book and spell, Ragnor double checks that the hinges of his front door aren’t going to give out.  


The door is remarkably still. He frowns. It’s atrociously out of character for Magnus to abandon him when he’s determined to socialize, let alone when it’s something deemed good and important by his friend. There’s a reason that the vast majority of his memories as High Warlock of London are of research and translations hunched up in the lobbies of various tailors’ shops. The thrice damned infernal devices fiasco and the Herondale’s propensity for trouble notwithstanding.  


Ragnor’s mouth twitches and he sets the potion and book down on thin air for a moment and cancels the silencing spell. There’s no knocking or sound of any kind from it. He opens it slowly and pokes his head out. Where he expects to find a Magnus dragging him into a headlock, there is only empty space and beyond it, his neighbor Kayla taking her dog Gordon out.  


_THUNK!!!!_  


Ragnor screams and slams the door even as pain blooms across his face and shoulder.  


He spins his back to the door and skims the room. Raptaptap. Ragnor startles to find Magnus balancing on the thin ledge outside his living room window. Blue fire dances around Magnus’s hands and feet and light his unrestrained grin with mischief.  


Ragnor sucks in a breath through his teeth before strutting over to the window. He knocks against the window with the back of a finger and crosses his arms in disappointment. “You look stuck,” Ragnor mouths with exaggeration. Magnus rolls eyes, cat pupils blown wide with an excitement that negates the sarcasm. He mimes opening the window with one hand, and Ragnor slouches like it’s such a burden to accommodate him. He pushes the window open and grabs Magnus’s arm to pull him through the wards around the outside of his home.  


“Ragnor!!! Ragnor my lovely cabbage!! Guess what guess what guess what what!?!” Magnus giggles from the floor, one arm still caught in Ragnor’s hand.  


He quirks an eyebrow. “Even if I don’t care, you’ll tell me anyway. So, what is the newest ‘stunning and ingenious,’” Ragnor drops Magnus’s arm and finger quotes, “fabric and or color combination for this spring?”  


“What?” Magnus twists and props himself up. He blinks and giggles some more. “I’m not,” he pauses before wrapping his free arm around his middle in laughter, “OH, you think I’m here for a normal reason.” His giggles bubble and snort in the back of his throat before he coughs twice. Magnus’s face sobers with a bright stare, and Ragnor is pinned in place like some small insect and not the centuries tried and true High Warlock he is. “I’m here. I’m here because I I have _WORDS,_ Ragnor,” Magnus hisses high and thin.  


Ragnor moves a step closer and bends close around his friend. Magnus flashes a quick grin that’s all teeth before fighting with the “very fashionable and trendy” sleeve with thumb holes to get it up his arm. Ragnor can feel the shallow wheezing way that Magnus breathes and the intermittent quake of his shoulders. The sapphire blue dances down Magnus’s forearm. Ragnor notes that their hand doesn’t tremble in the script. He spares a glance to the mark on Magnus’s wrist, and his stomach drops to see the swooping calligraphy of Shadowhunter runes in that same dark blue.  


Some bitter part of him smiles wryly that the universe is so cruel to associate Magnus’s soulmate with the Shadowhunters. Angels forbid that they _**be**_ a shadowhunter. It would be remarkably on brand for that to happen to his friend though.  


“So,” Ragnor hums, a hand on Magnus’s shoulder, “what have they told you, Magnus?”  


Magnus hems and haws. He pokes the bottom edge of the note. _Remember they are grounded._ Ragnor wrinkles his nose and settles himself on the floor beside his soulmate. “I mean, look how nice their handwriting is?! And they’re responsible yet easily caves to whoever is grounded? I, they they’d have to be. I mean, our symbol,” Magnus rubs his thumb against it like it itches. “I’m their soulmate back, Ragnor. If…if I wasn’t I’d have their mark but not the words. They match me.” Magnus chews on the inside of his cheek.  


“It would seem that way,” Ragnor pulls his hands in front of him and gestures for his forgotten book and potion to drift towards him.  


“It’s requited, right? They’re my soulmate. They’re gonna, they could love me. And I mean. Our symbol is just an indicator of what binds us. We could be meeting through working with the Shadowhunters; they could just be some amazing mundane with the Sight. The symbol doesn’t mean that they’re one of the Angel’s children. It doesn’t mean that they’ll think like the Clave tells them to feel and find me disgusting. _They’re my soulmate, Ragnor,_ being a Downworlder isn’t gonna matter.” Magnus’s words drip and flood out, and Ragnor jumps. His magic dissipates and drops the book and jar on his hard wood.  
Ragnor’s mouth pulls ugly for a moment before he’s dragging Magnus closer. He presses their foreheads together at an angle so that his horns don’t dig or tear at Magnus’s skin. “You’re destined to meet them, Magnus. You will meet them,” Ragnor mutters, and Magnus’s shoulders shake. He knows better than to promise. He knows better than to reassure Magnus that his soulmate will love him, that his soulmate will be kind, that his soulmate wants him back. Ragnor only knows that they will meet.  


He thinks about the faded rose colored soulmarks on his ribs and how they fade more and more every day, his past pain pal’s color ever more corrupted by the green of his skin. He remembers seeing a handful for acquaintances in passing with his green on their faces and hands. How they had gone pale and looked away from him in shame. He had apologized exactly once for his color on their skin and the bizarre knowledge that there was not the usual pain to accompany them.  


Ragnor remembers waking up with his own romantic mark. Of writing endless notes and doodles to his soulmate and his arms remaining bare. That the only maroon on his body was the crisp logo of the Hotel Dumort. He remembers meeting Raphael. He soulmate’s quick wit and snark. He remembers teasing Magnus ruthlessly together and reveling at meeting another immortal more similar to his own disposition.  


And he remembers mourning Raphael.  


Not because his soulmate was dead. But because his soulmate was dead as at 15. He mourned what could have been. And after they’d gotten Raphael settled into life in the night, Ragnor had waved Magnus farewell and spent the next month sulking in Tessa’s living space in the Spiral Labyrinth. And he got over it.  


But he knows that he’d be lying if he hadn’t wished Raphael to die a decade or two or three later. He’d be lying if he didn’t mutter wishful prayers to whatever deities would listen to wake up some day with a different mark and a grocery list on his palm. Instead, Ragnor heaves a sigh and thanks the stars that his current pain pals, his platonic soulmates, are warlocks also; that they are as immortal as he; that the muddled gold and river blue will not fade from his skin within a century.  


“So how long are you going to be staying with me then?” Ragnor mutters after Magnus has stopped shaking. His hair tickles Ragnor’s face when he moves away. It sticks up in weird clumps and all of Magnus smells vaguely of cat. Ragnor remembers the miniature floof that he’d been introduced to as Chairman Meow. He wonders idly what makes Magnus’s hair a good bed. His smile flits triumphant because Icarus had at least had the dignity to sleep beside him.  


Magnus sits up and dusts off his shirt. “Me stay with you?” His pupils narrow in skeptical evaluation of the flat. “In your terribly decorated apartment. In _Queens!?_ And need I remind you that I am a High Warlock? In Brooklyn. You’d honestly expect me to commute?!”  
Ragnor rolls his eyes.  


“Before you affronted me with that blasphemous suggestion, I was going to graciously offer for you to stay with me. In Brooklyn.”  


“I’m a High Warlock too you know.”  


“In _Alicante, **in Idris,**_ ” Magnus hisses, squinting at him. “You’re on vacation and your apartment is sad and lonely and you haven’t cared about it since your dog died like 4 years ago. Why not actually spend your vacation with an actual friend? Do you even know your neighbors?”  


Ragnor heaves himself to his feet and glares down at Magnus. “Because you’re not that good of a friend?” Almost hurt flashes green and yellow in Magnus’s return glare. “Really,” Ragnor sneers playfully, “what friend forgets their _**best friend’s**_ birthday!?” Ragnor huffs, hands on his hips.  


Magnus blinks.  


“THAT WAS FIFTY YEARS AGO, RAGNOR!”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey.  
> My love for Ragnor is tied if not above my love for Magnus. Reading the books, there was definitely a point where I got bored, but I was there for snippets of Ragnor and Malec.   
> I have a handful of other ficlets and drabbles written in this AU for Ragnor and his fantastic platonic soulmate(s).  
> Also, I need me some content for this man without him being relegated to a side romance or one chapter appearance.  
> (don't stop writing that for him though, I enjoy those fantastically also)  
> Find me at moreroads on tumblr if you wanna drop a prompt or discuss random stuff.


End file.
